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On the second day of last week’s Stanford Law- sponsored primer on corporate governance, I heard professor Joseph Grundfest, faculty director of the Rock Center for Corporate Governance, talk about the evolving role of corporate boards. Grundfest thinks that in the near future, individual directors will face more scrutiny from the press, and shareholders will use their voting power to influence corporate governance—rather than shell out millions of dollars to litigate or wage proxy campaigns.

“Running a corporation will become a much more political task,” says Grundfest. “Chief executives and board members will have to think more about the voter base. Currently many people take the view that you don’t have to worry about winning the support of majority shareholders.”

Grundfest used Massey Energy, which operates mines throughout Appalachia, as an example of how shareholders can exert power on a company through corporate governance. In April, 29 people died after an explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine. Since April 2009, federal regulars repeatedly cited the mine for violations related to its methane control plans.

Massey has a staggered board, which means that it’s made up of different classes of directors, with each class serving for a different length of time. Companies that have staggered boards have a better defense against hostile takeover attempts, since potential acquirers have to wait a longer time before they can use a normal voting procedure to take control of a company’s board.

In April CalSTRS and eight other pension funds raised their concerns about the mine’s safety record in a letter to Massey’s lead independent director, Bobby Ray Inman. The funds then filed an SEC notice encouraging shareholders to withhold votes for the re-election of three board members. Those directors, running unopposed, came close to losing, receiving between 55.1% and 57.8% of the vote. Almost 64% of voting shareholders voted to adopt majority voting—which would mean that a director who receives less than a majority vote must tender a resignation to the board. (The board can then accept or reject the resignation.) The idea behind majority voting is that it would personalize corporate disputes and allow shareholders to target individual directors.

Massey responded by agreeing to de-stagger the board, and also to voluntarily adopt a majority vote bylaw. “The mechanism for corporate democracy is becoming cheaper,” Grundfest says. “We’d be seeing the exact same things at BP if it were a US-chartered company. You don’t have to get into the front door to get into the house.”